January 25, 2009
Utter Infantilization
I cringed in embarrassment when I saw this photo — of Caroline Kennedy and JFK in 1958 — leading the NYT WIR piece, A Fumbled Handoff of the Torch.”
The article packages Teddy’s seizure at the inauguration lunch with Carolyn’s Senate seat misadventure to confirm the official decline of the Kennedy family. Beyond dramatizing her as a political neophyte, the photo’s cherished quality plays on the criticism of Caroline as entitled, the use of the image (as a last word) as much as calling her a baby.
(image: Ed Clark/Time & Life Pictures — Getty Images)
7 Comments Leave a comment
plebe said:
It’s a beautiful, touching photo. I am sorry it was used to try and bring her or the Kennedy family down. So she made a colossal mistake. She’s a Kennedy. That’s how they do things, on a grand scale, even when they screw up. But nobody died, save one of their own, as a result.
boxcar said:
It’s a great photo. There is one of little boxcar as a tot looking at the son-of-a-bitch dad who raised him (me).
I think a great many people have photos in their own collection like this.
So it was a fantastic editorial decision to use the photo. If they could have replace JFK with Obama it would have added the real message here.
Caroline found in Obama the father figure she never had, or lost way too soon.
She is a private person, who like the many millions of us, got caught up in the spirit and potential of what Obama represents. She made a bad call to try for the senate seat. She doesn’t belong there any more than RFK, Jr. But who can blame her for not thinking, “it would be cool to be in politics right now.”
I see anyone using Ted’s condition to draw any connections to anything -except perhaps the need for health care awareness – as dastardly.
peace
box
cenoxo said:
From the NYT Week in Review article:
Three, actually. Eldest son Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., 29, was killed in World War II flying an experimental B-24 bomber against the Germans.
His wealthy and ambitious father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. — America’s ambassador to Britain from 1938-1940 — was not unfriendly to the Nazi cause and believed that compromise with them was more desirable than war. He lived long enough to see three of his four sons (and his hopes for them) die violent deaths.
Political life, like family life, is not a straightforward matter of going from Point A to B. Trying to participate in both at the same time may not be the wisest choice.
Progressive Mom said:
I cannot recall a single infant photo of a male political figure being published as the sole photo to accompany a “real-time” story. Even the nostalgia photos of JFK Jr used by the media during his stint at George and after his death generally were of a toddler in action (saluting,hiding under the desk), not a totally needy infant.
The editors had plenty of Caroline Kennedy photos with her father to select from when she was already walking, talking and in action; that they selected this one wasn’t chance, happenstance or “cuteness”: it was selected to reduce an adult woman to an infant. Perhaps they were trying to reinforce the idea that she had been used in the Senate seat chase; perhaps by Paterson, by her handlers, perhaps by her uncle …. but that she was not walking, talking or taking her own actions.
Have we come a long way, baby?
the littlest gator said:
This is an obnoxious choice by the NYT. And Progressive Mom has it right when she points out we wouldn’t see this kind of image about a male candidate.
though I have seen young images of Obama– but only in bio stories not accompanying something about present politics.
JM said:
Not that I don’t agree with your overall point, Progressive Mom, but don’t you think that if it had been JFK, Jr., the press would have trotted out the family album? I think that *in this one case*, it might have to do more with being a Kennedy than with being a woman.
'tude said:
JM,
I am with the other women who think this image is exclusive to Caroline and the whole little princess thing. Had they wanted to show us the ‘little prince’ they would have used a version of this image. It (almost) always has something to do with being a woman.